Skip to main content

Which are the costs for the title deed?

I often get the question: Which are the costs for a title deed?
A very relevant question when buying a real estate in Turkey.

A title deed as such costs nothing, the correct question to ask would be: "What is the cost of registering the title deed?". So let us take look at that.

First and foremost you must paid 3.3 percent of the property value in taxes. In addition, around 300-500 TL in extra costs for various taxes and documents in relation to the application etc.

What is interesting here is primarily the 3.3 percent tax of the registered value since the registered value can differ a lot.
Strictly speaking the registered value should correspond to the contract price. But this is rarely the case. Without going into details, this is due to the fact that of registering the value of the property below actual buying price.
This will save money in taxes and is silently accepted by the Turkish authorities as part of a real estate deal in Turkey.

The good question is who decides the registered value? Well, the authorities decides the amount ...
It is simply the seller of the property who takes his deed to the authorities, shows his deed and finds out which amount he should register. And no one asks what the seller actually sold the property for that amount.
Instead the authorities makes a calculation based on various factors. What the "formula" consists of is unknown, but it includes things like property size, location and the at that time registered value. The new registered value will always be higher than the old one, and it is not acceptable to downsize the value of a property, even if it was sold with a loss.

Confused? Then read on ...


As an example, we recently issued two deeds within the same week in the same building for two different buyers and two different apartments.
The flats were sold from private owner to another private owner, and were identical except for size and floor. The smallest of the apartment had one bedroom and was located on the third floor. Here we had to register 140,000 TL. This meant that the owner had to pay about app. 5,000 TL of the registered value in tax.
Property number two was larger, with two bedrooms and a better location on the fifth
floor. This apartment was registered at 80,000 TL, so here the clients only paid 3,000 TL in tax.

How is that so? Logically the bigger apartment should be more expensive than the one bedroom apartment.
Correct, but in this case the explanation is that the smaller apartment was already registered with a quite high official value. This was because the contractor of the apartment had to register a high value, since the authorities demanded this at that time for tax purposes. The two bedroom apartment was registered at a time where the contractor could register a lower value.

And when properties are sold from their first owners, the authorities as described above, look at the initial registered value and determines the new value on behalf of that ...
In this case it results in two very different and values when two homes in the same complex are compared.
Very illogical ....

Are you now even more confused? I understand and even for us who work with these issues everyday, it is complex and we must keep the tongue straight to navigate.

As a buyer you must always be aware of how much the deed costs can be in the end. Therefore it is
important that you only do business with professionals who can guide through all this, and explain the complexity.
In case you are not aware of this part of the deal, you might get yourself a bad surprise when the cost of the deed must be paid.
The only way to check the costs is through personal contact with the authorities, which must be a specific inquiry on the deed.

Make sure to do that, it can protect you against unpleasant surprises.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hottest topic of Alanya is about your guests

  Recently the most discussed topics related to real estate in Alanya is without doubt the amendments to the law about short time rental of privately owned property. This has led to several other discussions that are also relevant for owners of private properties that do not rent out their property. Mainly two questions are being discussed.... - When are people that are staying in my property to be considered as commercial rentals? and - Must I register my guests with the local authorities and how is that done?   On social media platforms a fierce discussion has been going on. So far most information available has been 3rd party information such as "according to.... ", "we were told that... ", "local authorities said that... " and so on. In this blog post we will take a slightly different approach. We will take a look at the actual laws and form an opinion based on what the laws and regulations say. Before we start please note this carefully: - This inform...

Good advice when issuing a power of attorney

Good advice when issuing a power of attorney This is usually worth considering when buying or selling real estate or when you are in need of an accountant or a lawyer. Quite often, it can be useful and time-saving to issue a power of attorney to a third party, who can then act on your behalf. The process itself is simple and fast, and alone in and around Alanya there are almost ten different notary offices to choose from. These are the most important issues to remember when issuing a power of attorney: Only issue powers of attorney to persons that you trust and that you know who they are. Make sure that the power of attorney is specific and for your exact purpose only. When selling your property via power of attorney, the exact registration and location must be specified. When selling a car, the licence plate and registration must be specified and so on. If it serves a purpose, consider making a time-limited power of attorney. Use a professional translator whom you unde...

Size of a Turkish squaremeter

  This time, we will examine something that should seem quite simple: the size of a square meter. First, let's see what Wikipedia has to say on the subject: The square meter is a unit of area. It is defined as the area of a square whose sides measure exactly one meter. For those particularly interested in the subject, it is worth noting that one square meter equals 0.000001 square kilometers or 10,000 square centimeters. One question Wikipedia does not answer is the size of a Turkish square meter. Experience has taught us that one European square meter and one Turkish square meter are not equal. This is most obvious when we receive the floor plans for the units we promote. These are often quite exaggerated, and we often see 2-bedroom apartments listed as 150 square meters. However, visiting the apartment in question often reveals a different story. In other words, the 150-square-meter apartment turns out to be just 100 square meters. The main reasons for this are: - In Turkey, info...